“We’ve been posted to Germany” my husband announced, then waited with apprehension for my reaction.
I knew overseas was a three year posting. But Germany! Well, it sounded like fun.
Within weeks we had our passports and had sold our car. One morning my husband walked to the corner store for cigarettes and came home and found me sitting on the doorstep with the baby and our travelling bags. The movers had come and left.
Our trip was to be by ship … and I am a rotten sailor. It was seven days of sea-sickness on the old Franconia, which I believe was dry-docked some time later. One morning my husband went for breakfast and there were only three hearty souls that made it to the dining room that morning.
We finally arrived in La Havre, France and took a train to Zweibrucken, Germany (#3 Wing), where we were graciously taken in by my husband’s cousins, who had been stationed there earlier. (Another of those little miracles, that God performs, for I was not a well girl when I arrived.)
There were no married quarters available so we went searching for accommodation. Our first home consisted of one room. We slept on a creative arrangement made up of a single sofa and a long pallet covered by six cushions filled with straw. I stretched a double sheet over it to give an illusion of a double bed, but invariably one of us fell through to the floor in the night. The baby had a borrowed crib. We shared both the bathroom and the kitchen with our landlady. The war years had taught her to waste nothing and even my soapy dishwater went into a pail for later floor-washing.
Our second accommodation boasted its own toilet, but we used the land-lady’s bathtub once a week. She adored our daughter and was very kind to us. I’d often visit with Frau Lauer and with smiles and sign language and simple German phrases we had our own Kafeeeklatches.
Finally in my seventh month of pregnancy we got notice we had a PMQ (Private Married Quarters) apartment. For the first few months we lived like fish…in the bathtub and oh those European tubs were long and deep. We were the cleanest couple in all of Zweibrucken.
Our new baby was 1 ½ years old when it was time to return home. Yes, another miserable trip! But this time only five days long. We loaded our camping gear on our new Volkswagen and headed for B.C. to show off our two little girls to the grandparents.
After so many years away I had so much to tell everyone and after three days I opened my mouth one morning and not a sound came out. No one has had that verbal advantage on me since.
We had ten years in the Air Force but those three in West Germany were some of the best years of our lives.
Revised from Legion Magazine December/January 1992-93
